


Embrace Me

by CrystalRebellion



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Again, Angst, Comfort, F/M, Happy Ending, Healing, Hugging, Learning to trust, Sad, let lotor be hugged, let lotor hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 02:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20884328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrystalRebellion/pseuds/CrystalRebellion
Summary: After being freed from the Sincline ship and returned to the Atlas to recover, Lance and Lotor have a heart to heart conversation.  Lance shares a comforting ritual from Earth, which later allows a much-needed catharsis in the presence of another.  (S8 Canon-Divergent.)





	Embrace Me

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning - it does start off angsty, but it ends fluffy. This is my answer to a "Give Lotor A Hug!" prompt.

_ Screaming. _

_ White light. _

_ Curses. Threats. Condemnation. _

_ Explosions. Fire. Howls. _

_ Fury. Pain. Anguish. _

** _Silence._ **

_ Absolute. Silence. For how long? _

_ Long enough for the swirl of quintessence and emotion to become a very part of his soul, his heart, forever bonded with the very makeup of his existence. Born of it - for a fleeting moment he thought he would die to it. _

* * *

A swishing sound marking the opening of the door drew him from his recollections. Lotor’s eyes fluttered open to stare at the quiet, peaceful starscape outside the Atlas window. His elbows propped on his thighs, chin resting atop folded digits as he contemplated his situation.

“Dark in here,” his visitor commented, almost uncomfortably. The riftborn dropped his palms back to the space between his knees before he slowly rose to his feet from the comfortable chair.

His body protested and ached beneath the plates of armor in a manner he would never show. A weakness he could never express. He turned, eyes following on the uneasy form of the paladin of the Red Lion.

“So do you… like the darkness, or something?”

Lance glanced around the common room; noting the lights were all extinguished, save the starlight flickering in from the galaxies outside. The space was a hollow comparison to the lounge on the Castleship and as his eyes drifted over the furniture scattered about, he found himself rooted in regrets. Regrets for what had been, could’ve been… and had been lost.

“I prefer the starlight,” Lotor finally replied, drawing Lance’s eyes back to him.

“Aren’t you, like, supposed to be resting? I went by the medical ward to check on you and you weren’t there.”

“I am,” he admitted, the slightest hint of a bemused note in the timbre of his voice.

“You’re supposed to be resting, or you are resting?” Lance folded his arms across his chest and eyed the Galtean dubiously.

“Yes.”

At Lance’s frustrated expression, Lotor eased the tension.

“Both,” he conceded then gestured toward the chair facing the glass pane he had vacated.

“Oh well, that’s. ...That’s good.”

“Have further plans been made? The witch must be-”

“Stopped, we know,” Lance cut in. Lotor pressed his lips together tightly at the interruption but said nothing else; it wasn’t a habit he was unused to from the Paladins, after all. As if sensing the tension in the room, Lance sighed, palming the back of his head before taking a couple more steps into the room. “Sorry,” he exhaled. “That’s… not exactly why I’m here.”

Lotor’s irritated expression melted briefly into confusion before hiding behind a stoic, nondescript facade.

“Oh?”

“Just… wanted to see how you were doing, I guess.”

The paladin seemed unable to meet the emperor’s eyes as he glanced to a nearby wall.

“Your physician has cleared me of any complications,” he replied stiffly, his brow twitching slightly at the strange emotion on display before him. “I am not a liability, nor-”

“No,” Lance cut him off suddenly. As he caught the perturbed expression on Lotor’s face, his palm grasped the bridge of his nose and he pressed his eyes closed. “I have _ got _ to stop doing that,” he muttered to himself. “No, I meant like, are you okay?”

Lotor stiffened, drawing up to his full height.

“I do not understand your question. I just explained -” Lotor froze when Lance opened his mouth to speak over him once more, but a heavy silence fell between them as the pilot caught himself and snapped his jaw shut, allowing him to finish his sentence. “-explained that I was cleared of all medical assessments. There is still some latent quintessence, but Coran seemed certain that once the Princess has recovered, she might be able to assist, if she were even so willing.”

“Allura will. She absolutely will,” Lance replied with determination, removing another two paces between them. “She… she feels pretty terrible about it all. I know she’s hiding it. But… I can tell, you know? She knows how important this mission is, how, well, literally everything in all reality hangs on us stopping Honerva. I think… I think she feels like she’s failed, somehow.”

“Failed?” His eyes widened for the first time openly. “She is the key to salvation - she alone can stop her, how in all the stars can she feel like she _ failed? _”

A quiet moment settled over them as Lance studied the shocked expression and rare emotion in the man’s voice.

“She feels like she failed _ you. _”

It took a moment for Lotor to find his voice, and for the first time the Paladin didn’t look away, instead fiercely holding his gaze, daring him to argue.

“On the contrary,” Lotor began carefully, the first to break the eye contact. “It was _ I _ who failed _ her._”

“Look, we both know that’s not true.” Lance unfurled his arms and stalked the remaining distance toward the recovering leader, pausing mere inches from his torso. He stiffened, but did not step back.

“And what do you suggest?” Lance heard the aristocratic lilt in his voice, and as a wary sensation rolled down his spine, he realized precisely what he was seeing: a defense mechanism.

An exhale.

“I don’t know."

The raw admission once more stilled the Galtean, and he felt his shoulders relax slightly on their own as Lance glanced away.

“I don’t think any of us do,” he continued. “Not even Allura. Or Shiro. …Or Keith. And one of them is always bound to have an idea. All I know is that right now, we need each other.” He hesitated for a moment, glancing up to Lotor pointedly. “And we need you. ..._Specifically_ Allura." 

“Even after…”

While Lotor trailed off, unable to bring himself to finish the thought, Lance still patiently waited, making the conscious effort to allow him to speak his side.

“Yeah. Especially after that,” he replied quietly when Lotor didn’t continue. “And not because you’re just some tactical advantage. But, whether you like it, whether you want to be - you’re one of us. You don’t have to accept it, but, you’ve got a family here should you ever want it."

“Your… offer is… flattering, but... unnecessary. Thank you, however.”

Lance quirked an eyebrow at the man.

“Look, dude, I know we screwed up but I’m trying to make it right. If you don’t want to be in our family, that’s fine, but you don’t gotta be so harsh about it.”

“Oh, that’s not at all what I meant,” Lotor answered with a wave of a clawed palm dismissively. “I simply mean that I don’t need a family.”

“Don’t need a family? Everyone needs a family! Everyone needs someone to lean on, to joke with, to laugh with - and about, to cook for and eat with. Families are everything. I… I really miss mine a lot. I’m grateful I got to see them again before we launched but. I think about them every day. ...Don’t you have someone like that? Anyone at all? Those generals?”

A strange shadow flashed over Lotor’s face before being obscured once more behind his impassive features.

“I cannot… I can’t say I understand what any of those things are. ...I haven’t ever experienced them before. I’ve never had anyone to call fa-”

Silence shot through the room like a cannon blast and Lotor felt as though the air were knocked from his lungs through his chestplate. Every muscle in his body shifted into high alert, every bone braced for impact and every tendon pressed for a counter strike.

Arms pinned to his side, Lotor’s biceps flexed dangerously in automatic defense, ready to deflect the invasion. But when no further assault landed, he stilled. Breath held, he glanced down.

The strange young earthling in blue armor had his cheek pressed against the bulk of the armor, his arms curling around his waist, pinning his upper arms to his side. It was an entirely dangerous gambit on his part - his back was completely exposed should he think to strike back. Moreover, it didn’t appear to be an assault of any kind he had seen before, as Lance had simply frozen before him.

“...What are you doing?”

Wariness edged with curiosity caused Lotor’s voice to crack slightly.

“Seriously? You don’t even know what a _ hug _ is?”

“I’m not familiar with this militaristic tactic.”

“It’s not…” Lance exhaled in frustration. “It’s… it’s what you do when you want to show someone you care about them.”

Several seconds ticked by before hesitantly, Lotor raised his forearms and carefully, gently placed them on Lance’s back lightly. 

A sharp snort of a laugh left Lance’s lungs at the gesture.

“Close enough,” he muttered, a smile lacing his words as he released Lotor to step back and give him space once more. As Lance tossed the Galran a poor attempt at a proper salute, he turned to make his way out of the room. “Just so you know,” he added, pausing in the open doorway. “Never again. We’ve got your back from here on out.”

Without waiting for an answer, he continued over the threshold, letting the door close automatically between them.

Lotor stared after him, genuinely perplexed at the exchange. Slowly, he glanced down to his palms as he raised them up in front of himself. He noted with muted surprise that the tips of his digits were soft and rounded; the first time he had felt relaxed enough to allow the claws to retract since his emancipation from the Sincline ship.

_ Family. _

* * *

Allura glanced up at the sound of a door opening. She blinked, surprised at her sudden guest.

“Lotor,” she murmured, quickly closing the data screen projecting in front of her as she sat up abruptly from the hospital wing. “Are you alright?”

The blanket that had draped over her was settling into a pile on the floor before he could answer her.

“I am, Princess,” he replied quickly, with more formality than she was used to. She paused, perched on the edge of the bed as he walked in carefully, pausing to pick up the discarded blanket.

Wordlessly, he offered it to her, unsure how welcome his presence would be. She smiled, accepting it with gratitude and smoothing it over her lap.

“Would you… like to join me?” Allura lifted up a corner of the blanket, gesturing to the space beside her.

“You would welcome such company?”

“I would,” she agreed, a smile across her lips as he approached, easing down beside her. She grasped the tablet and re-projected the screen before them. “I’ve been studying some of the quintessence field emission lines. Here and here,” she pointed to the screen.

Her brow furrowed as she exhaled stiffly.

“Perhaps you can make more sense of it than I. You are, after all, the one who found Oriande,” she added, passing the tablet fully into his hands.

“Contrarily, it was _ you _ who activated the Compass Stone. Had you not, it may have lain dormant in the witch’s lair indefinitely.”

“Honerva,” she corrected quietly, noting the pain that flashed behind his eyes. She turned to face him where they sat, palming his cheek gently. “You knew. You knew even then, didn’t you?”

Lotor stiffened slightly under her palm. With a weary exhale, he conceded and as his eyelids draped closed, his body relaxed against her. He hummed his assent, unable to bring himself to say the words aloud. When his eyes opened again, he was met with watery, prismatic depths holding a pain that mirrored his own.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her thumb brushing over his cheek lightly in a soothing motion. As she withdrew her hand from him, faint threads of smoke followed her palm, glowing in the artificially illuminated medical ward.

He inhaled sharply, the sensation of cold rivulets flooded along his skin and beneath his flesh, as if siphoning from his very soul. As the errant quintessence coalesced in her palm as a quiescent sphere of energy, a weak smile traced over her lips.

“Better.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, and it was correct. He _ was _ better. The gripping terror, the pain unleashed, the fury of a thousand suns all exhaled from him. Shadows and fragments of loss and ache would always be a part of him; forever soldered into his soul by the very nature of his being, but for the first time in nearly three decaphoebs, he felt _ hope _ again. 

Glancing down into the expression of wonderment on the last Altean princess’s face, he felt for the very first time in all his existence a strange warmth swelling in his chest. It felt like liquid light, radiating and threatening to burst out from him.

“See?”

Allura turned away to point across the room to the panel of reflective glass above a small vanity. As he followed her gaze, his breath caught in his lungs.

He stared, frozen, and Allura leaned over until her cheek pressed against his, centering their faces in the frame. She grinned at his reflection in the mirror, admiring the pair of glowing lavender marks. 

Lotor was, once again, Chosen. 

Allura’s, too, were illuminated from the effort to extract the remaining quintessence, and the pair of alchemists could only watch each other’s reflection in amazement.

_ The light shattered _.

Lotor couldn’t hold back the heat that had swelled in his chest. It ached to break free and he no longer feared unleashing it. Whatever the effervescent sensation was, he wanted to bathe her in it.

Without warning, his arms unfurled and wrapped tightly around Allura, drawing her into his embrace. Unsure what he was doing, he merely buried his face against the top of her cloud-like hair, utterly dousing himself in all that she was.

Laughter filtered up from her frame and he felt her arms wind around his torso and cling to his back.

“I see Lance has finally explained to you what a hug is. I’ll admit, the gesture had me quite perplexed at the time.”

His own chest vibrated with something that should have been laughter, but came out as almost a cry of relief. Whatever this moment they shared was - he wanted it. He _ needed _ it. He _ had needed _ it for a very, very long time.

He devoured it all with the desperation of a starving man finding nourishment.

“I’m so, so glad you’re back, Lotor,” she murmured against him, her body lax in his arms as if she never intended to leave. Pure, holy elation flooded his veins and he was nearly overcome with the surreal feeling. _ Wanted. _ While he had known most of his life that the sensation was lacking, never had he imagined how viscerally pleasant it would be - and never had he dreamed it would come from _ her. _

It took Lotor a moment to find his voice and steady his words, but once he did, he could only utter unadulterated truth.

“As am I, Allura.”

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a quick drabble and turned into a short one-shot, so I thought I'd post it. Thank you for reading!


End file.
